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Redshift Now Provides Integration with SideFX Houdini

New plugin brings the lightning-fast speed of GPU-accelerated render engine Redshift to SideFX’s powerful all-in-one 3D application combining modeling, animation, rigging and compositing.

LOS ANGELES -- Redshift Rendering Technologies, developers of leading render engine Redshift, has announced its integration with SideFX Software’s procedural animation tool Houdini.

Redshift is a powerful, biased GPU-accelerated renderer that seamlessly integrates with industry-standard content creation tools including Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Softimage and Autodesk 3ds Max, with both MAXON Cinema 4D and The Foundry’s KATANA integrations in the works.

It’s the fastest growing new rendering product on the market today and is currently used by creative studios such as Nickelodeon Animation Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Glassworks, Blue Zoo and many more.

Houdini is a powerful all-in-one 3D application combining modeling, animation, rigging, compositing and more. It’s used by a wide range of CG artists around the globe in industries such as film, TV, games, advertising and beyond.

The brand-new Houdini plugin puts Redshift’s industry-leading GPU-accelerated rendering performance into the hands of Houdini users the world over. Features of the Redshift for Houdini integration include support for hair and fur, instancing particles, strands, volumes and Non-GUI tools, and all-round optimized performance.

Cristin Barghiel, CTO at Side FX comments: “Projects created in Houdini can range from the deceptively simple to incredibly complex. Having this new integration with Redshift will be a huge benefit to a whole range of Houdini users as Redshift produces super-fast renders, subsequently enabling shorter iterations. Having already seen some really fantastic work produced in Houdini and rendered with Redshift during the Alpha testing phase, it is our hope now that this official integration will work to empower even more Houdini users to create work in new and interesting ways.”

Key Houdini integration features

  • Hair and Fur – Support of the Houdini curve primitives, that are extracted as RS hair objects.
  • Houdini primitives – Automatic and configurable tessellation of the Houdini primitive surfaces (primitives, nurbs, etc.)
  • Instancing/particles – Support of the Houdini instancing, including the Instance OBJ node, and the “instance” and “instancepath” attributes, extracted as RS Instances or RS Point Clouds
  • User Data Attributes – Support for arbitrary user data attributes per object or instance, enabling shading variation without requiring different materials
  • Strands – Render of any kind of Houdini primitive as RS strands
  • Volumes – Direct rendering of OpenVDB files and the Houdini Volume and VDB primitives. Support of volume instancing and velocity grids
  • Non-GUI tools – The plugin is compatible with all the Houdini non-GUI tools (hython, hscript, etc.) and includes a set of custom HScript commands to control the renderer.

“Our aim is to give as many artists as possible the opportunity to benefit from the power of GPU rendering,” comments Redshift co-founder & CTO Panos Zompolas. “That’s why, after a thorough development process, we’re delighted to launch Redshift for SideFX Houdini. Redshift can now stand as the rendering backbone to the incredible procedural animation Houdini enables.”

Redshift can be downloaded at www.redshift3d.com. Licensing starts from $500 for a node-locked license with 1 year of maintenance.

Source: Redshift Rendering Technologies

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.